The good-hearted people who own the Aldredge House in the Swiss Avenue Historic District need to get busy finding a revenue model that allows them to move away from the wedding-chapel business.

That’s my sad takeaway after conducting more than a dozen interviews with folks on various sides of the standoff between the bewildered Dallas County Medical Society Alliance Foundation and a group of angry, determined neighbors.

Since the Dallas Board of Adjustment hearing in October, I held onto a thread of hope that the two parties could come to an agreement that would allow a limited number of commercial events to continue, events that the Aldredge group relies on as a funding stream for the house. But as the Aldredge House prepares to make its case to Plan Commission, my hopes for compromise have all but evaporated. DMN city hall reporter Tristan Hallman wrote about the latest developments here.

It’s tragic that the owners of an establishment that played a significant role in the elegant comeback of this historic part of our city are seeing their efforts backfire on them decades later. Regrettably, they didn’t mind the store closely enough but instead were happy to turn the management of the house over to a professional who seems to have served them -- and the neighbors -- poorly.

While many of the Aldredge House’s neighbors support the alliance in its fight to host the weddings, others don’t give a fig that the women’s group stood strong to preserve this house in bad times. They only care about what is going on right now. And they say that the Aldredge House became a party den out of control.

You can quibble with some of what sound like hyperbolic accusations from the neighborhood leaders about the weddings and birthday parties. And you can argue that some of them moved in after the Aldredge House had long been hosting nuptials.

But here’s why I fear the alliance can’t win, no matter how well-intentioned its members are: It’s hard to argue with the documents regarding what the city has said was allowed at the house.

The plaque on the front of the Aldredge House notes that it was given to be used as a headquarters building.

As best I can tell, no type of commercial activity was ever codified in any City Hall document. The use of the house evolved as a gentlemen’s agreement of sorts with neighbors -- use without fiat.

A quick history lesson will help you understand why so many in the preservation community are supporting the Aldredge House’s fight -- and why I wish the documents showed something other than what they do:

The Swiss Avenue Historic District, born in 1973, was Dallas’ first serious historic preservation effort. The neighborhood, a boulevard of large homes in Tudor, Georgian Spanish Colonial and Italianate styles, was in terrible decline by 1970, and it appeared that all those grand homes were likely to be sliced up into cheap flats by absentee landlords.

But neighbors beat the bushes to pull together support for historic designation in what was a long, hard battle. An effort so well handled that it became a model for similar actions in other cities.

The Dallas County Medical Society Alliance Foundation, then known as the Women’s Auxiliary to the Dallas County Medical Society, was part of that fight as it worked to acquire the George Aldredge home, located at 5500 Swiss. The house was built in 1915-17 for West Texas rancher William Lewis and was purchased in 1921 by banker Aldredge and his wife, Rena (Munger).

It was Mrs. Aldredge who deeded the home to the auxiliary. A document to the City of Dallas Building Inspection office dated April 8, 1973, from the auxiliary said the group wanted to preserve the house and use it “for its general meetings and board meetings” and “make it available to members to use for private entertaining.” The letter went on: “The Auxiliary is also studying the feasibility of renting the house to other select groups such as the dental, lawyers bankers wives, etc. for their meetings.”

Great detail is provided regarding the relatively small number of people who would be meeting at the home at any given time.

The Historic Preservation League noted in a letter to the women’s group dated June 21, 1973, that while the City Plan Commission recommended duplex and single family zoning for Swiss Avenue’s historic boulevard, the league supported including a special provision for the auxiliary as “a museum and meeting place.”

In 1982, that nonconforming use status apparently was again upheld, but no one has been able to produce any document that indicates that the material included anything about weddings or other commercial enterprises.

Yet somewhere between 1973, when the women’s group took ownership, and the early 1980s, group meetings and occasional events evolved into weddings -- then more and more weddings. A 1985 story in The Dallas Morning News regarding wedding venues said:

The Aldredge House, 5500 Swiss Ave., is another popular choice for a residential setting. Finished in 1917, the elegant home offers facilities for weddings as well as receptions and has room for more than 200. Rental for the home ranges from $300-$750, depending on expected attendance.

As best I can tell, homeowners around the Aldredge House didn’t seem bothered by the weddings for about three decades -- or if they did, they assumed they couldn’t do anything about the growing number of events and kept their mouths shut.

Coincidentally, I have a friend who lives on Swiss about a block and a half from the Aldredge House; she and I have never talked about this issue. When I mentioned Sunday that I was writing about the controversy over the house, she said, "Yes, they had some wall-rattling wedding parties -- it seemed like every Saturday -- for a long time over there. Even in my bedroom, it was quite loud." She noted that it's now really quieted down. (She had not been approached about an anti-Aldredge petition circulating, so had no idea what's afoot.)

It was when some weddings hit the "wall-rattling" level that a group of neighbors, first led by lawyer Chris Hamilton, who lives across the street from the Aldredge House, and, more recently former Texas secretary of state David Dean, got understandably fired up.

(If Dean’s name rings a bell when it comes to preservation, it’s because back in 2005 he persuaded the City Council to overturn a Landmark Commission ruling denying him permission to add a 400-square-foot closet and exercise room onto his 1916 home.)

It’s crystal clear that Dean, who provided our editorial board a petition of homeowners who agree that the Aldredge House needs to stop its commercial activities, does not intend to back down.

While Dean’s come-at-you-with-both-barrels approach was not to my tastes, the women’s group, whom we met with first, isn’t without blame here. Over time, they turned more and more of the commercial operation over to a caterer who allowed the parties to get more unruly. Undoubtedly, there were too many weddings -- upwards of 60 in the last year or two -- loud music, not enough parking, tipsy party-goers and, perhaps the tipping point, a vendor who forged neighbors’ signatures each time it needed to go to the city for a tent permit.

(Of course, there's also the conundrum of being granted a tent permit for a property operating outside the stated agreement in the first place.)

Given that answers from the two sides to any question are 180 degrees apart, it’s no wonder that an agreement can’t be reached. Elected officials, nonprofits and preservationists have done their best to help, with absolutely no success so far.

Anyone who reads me regularly knows that I’m all about preservation. And I have huge respect for many of the folks who have lined up on the side of the Aldredge House and its keepers. So here’s where I think those same preservationists in the background of this debate can make a difference: By trying again to assist the alliance in creating a new revenue model.

The alliance foundation, possibly with help from more knowledgeable allies, needs to come up with how much revenue is necessary to maintain and operate the house -- expenses, taxes, insurances. Then the group needs to determine how -- through the foundation itself, donations and certain special events -- it can generate those funds. This has to be managed better than the current plan, where the women themselves write checks to make ends meet for the house when even the weddings don’t bring in sufficient funds. (It's little wonder the members didn't ask more questions of the caterer when more and more money came in for more lavish affairs.)

And, yes, it's possible that the numbers just don’t work without the weddings and other commercial ventures. That means the house could revert into private hands, which greatly concerns preservationists. But given that it’s in the historic district, many restrictions are already in place. Plus, the current owners could put deed restrictions on the buyer to prevent interior changes.

Perhaps another option for the house is for the newly formed nonprofit Dallas Endowment for Endangered Properties to consider contributing to -- or buying -- this property. (You may recall that preservationists Lisa Marie Gala, Virginia McAlester, Jim Rogers and Neil Emmons announced the nonprofit in January; at the time, Emmons cited the Aldredge House controversy as the kind of situation the new group would assist with.)

Let me be clear: I think it’s a shame that the current Aldredge House folks might, in effect, be kicked out. I can understand why people have a strong emotional attachment to their stewardship of the home and everything they have done as part of the preservation fight. The alliance took a chance on Swiss Avenue at a time when I suspect many of these won't-back-down neighbors wouldn’t have walked down the street, much less invest in a home there.

That said, a number of people who have been fighting the good preservation fight for a long time regretfully agree that the alliance foundation’s hands-off approach in recent years backfired big time. What the alliance -- most of them from the Park Cities and Preston Hollow -- saw as small hiccups, the neighbors saw as deep disrespect by absentee landlords. So firing the caterer under whose tenure so many problems occurred and promising to make other changes is falling on deaf ears.

Perhaps the Plan Commission will surprise us all and approve the latest Plan Development proposal put forward by the alliance -- the proposal addresses many complaints but not nearly enough for Dean’s taste. It’s clear that his group thinks the documentation is on its side -- and while these neighbors say they are happy to help raise money to support the Aldredge House’s upkeep, they don’t want any nonconforming uses codified.